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HOLDFAST -- AT HOME IN THE NATURAL WORLD |
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CONNECTION THE TESTIMONY OF THE MARSH At the upper end of a high desert lake, where spring runoff floods into dwarf willows and marsh grass, the coots are so noisy we don't even try to talk. Two males lower their heads, run across the water, and charge at each other. Butting chests, they start to kickfight. It apparently isn't easy to kick when you're a coot on water, but they flop and jump, falling on their backs, trying to grab with one foot and smack with the other. The noise is awful; hooting like gorillas, they splash their wings and slap their feet until they are hidden behind a screen of spray. The Canada geese pretend they don't notice. The gander swims between his goslings and the coots, a parent herding his children through Times Square. But the yellow-headed blackbirds have no such inhibitions. "Wow," they say. "Wow." Frank and I, entirely without shame, sit in the canoe and study the coots with binoculars. Suddenly the fight is over. The coots turn their backs and in utmost contempt, lift their wings as if they were shirttails and moon each other. On their little duckish backsides are two big white dots. Their feathers are ruffled, their foreheads are swollen, and they never stop yacking, a sound that carries all the way across the lake. Nothing in the world matters to a coot, it would seem, but to carry on like this all night. Usually western grebes are stately birds with long white necks and a thoughtful look. But this evening, they've got their necks bent so far back their foreheads touch their tails, displaying a gorgeous arc of white throat. Then, just when we think they will turn a backward somersault with the effort to show off, two grebes come together. They lift their heads, stretch their necks to great heights, rise on frantically paddling feet, and rush side by side toward open water, their arched necks as high and proud as prancing stallions. Then they slow, sink, and dive underwater. "Wow," say the yellow-headed blackbirds. There must be thousands of yellow-heads, each one tilting and swaying on a high branch of a willow thicket, yellow feathers all fluffed out and wings lifted to display blazing white patches and broad shoulders. Chasing, preening, threatening, posturing, showing off, yelling a call that sounds like "shut up," but never shutting up -- it's a nonstop display of rudeness, insults and imprecations, harsh throaty challenges that go on and on. I feel like a playground supervisor in the midst of all this mischief. Somewhere up in the sky, a snipe is carving enormous arcs, its wings whinnying in the wind. The amount of energy devoted to all this aggression and sex and territoriality is astounding. And this says nothing of the swallows, who dive by and snatch insects off the water, or perch, chattering, on a strand of barbed wire stretched over the marsh. Sometimes two swallows separate from the others, fly high in the air, fussing around each other, and then fall together. As they fall, they flutter their wings so they descend in a close spiral, their bodies repeatedly coming together with the lightest touch, a kiss. It's the most beautiful mating display I have ever seen, and we turn the canoe to get another look at the softness of the touch, the breathtaking plunge, the fluttering fall, the spiral, the dance of falling. And then there is another pair, falling, fluttering, coming together, and just as their wing-tips touch the water, soaring off in different directions. The soft hills on the far side of the lake reflect on water roiled and mussed by waterfowl intent on their purposes, all sound and fury, concentrating with deadly earnest on the business at hand. The noise charges the air like electricity. And then the frogs switch on. First there is the sawing soprano line of the tree frogs, kreck-ek kreck-ek. The red-legged frogs' calls are deeper, regular on a one-two count, a low-throated GRACK-grick that seems to come from the near edge of the marsh. The lake is a riot, an orchestra of lunatics warming up. All the nighttime hoots and clacks and sighs and squeaks. An eared grebe pops up next to the canoe. He looks us over with a glowing red eye. A fan of golden feathers flares back from both sides of his brow. The grebe bobs its head and raises its elbows to threaten us. Does he want to fight the canoe? Then he takes another look, ducks his head, somersaults into the water, and disappears. A dozen mergansers beat against the water and flap into the night. Yellow fades out of the sky. The marsh, at last, grows quiet. All this raucous celebration of health and life and love and beauty, every ounce of attention and strength focused on this business of carrying on -- it stops our paddles and leaves us breathless and rejoicing. Uproarious, raging life. What does it mean? *** Every now and then, a student in my philosophy class will raise The Question. Clearly embarrassed to ask what seems like a parody of all questions, he plunges in anyway. What is all this for? What does it signify? What is the meaning of life? It's usually an easy enough question to evade. Professors get pretty glib, and there are lots of gambits, and these days philosophy is mostly about language anyway, and you can usually turn the question back on the student or tell him that if he has to ask, he probably won't be satisfied with the answer. And then the words trail off and students shift in their seats, impatient to move back to material that will be on the test. But last week, a student who had studied metaphysics and epistemology and Soren Kierkegaard, the student who read Immanuel Kant and brought fresh fruit to class, killed herself with a single gunshot to the head, sitting at home, at the kitchen table. She left no note, no explanation, and no one can make any sense of it. Her professors lean heavily against the classroom walls and cannot speak. We realize too late that we never taught our students what ducks know without knowing, that "we must love life before loving its meaning," as Dostoyevsky told us. We must love life, and some meaning may grow from that love. But "if love of life disappears, no meaning can console us." What is it all for, this magnifying-glass-in-the-sun focus on being, this marshland, this wetness, this stewpot, this great splashing and thrusting, this determination among the willows, the flare-up, the colors, the plumage, the effort, the noise, the complexity that leaves no note? Nothing, I think, except to continue. This is the testimony of the marsh: Life directs all its power to one end, and that is to continue to be. A marsh at nightfall is life loving itself. Nothing more. But nothing less, either, and we should not be fooled into thinking this is a small thing.
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